Executive Director Pam Dixon will be speaking at the Biometrics Institute Congress during Biometrics Week, October 16-19. “I am pleased to be speaking at the international biometrics Congress regarding the vital issue of ethics and social impact of biometrics,” said Pam Dixon. “Biometrics are increasingly used in everyday situations, and are having equally increasing impacts.”

Going Digital, Working Party on Security and Privacy in the Digital Economy, OECD, 24-25 Sept. 2018. Paris, France. Pam Dixon, WPF Executive Director, is an expert advisor to the OECD on AI as part of the AI Expert Group. This is the first meeting of the group, to discuss a principle framework. https://www.oecd.org/going-digital/

Annual Safety Net Meeting of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, 30 July – 1 August 2018. San Francisco, CA. WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon. Plenary session: Privacy Myths vs Realities: Practical Info About Where the Real Problems Are and How to Solve Them. This presentation is a deep dive into critically important privacy

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.